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Written by K P Krishnan, Anirudh Burman, Suyash Rai | Updated: May 9, 2020 7:46:29 am The migrants efforts to leave the cities before the lockdown, and the extraordinary efforts some put in to get back home, suggest that they have very low resilience to stay in cities without employment.

The fallout of the lockdown in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19 highlights the urgent need to rationalise the legislative framework for labour in India. Migrant labour has been among the worst affected due to the lockdown. Their efforts to leave the cities before the lockdown, and the extraordinary efforts some put in to get back home, suggest that they have very low resilience to stay in cities without employment. They fall through the cracks of Indias social security net, and the government response has shown a significant gap between high-minded intentions reflected in existing laws and their implementation.

A key piece of legislation governing inter-state migrants in India is the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979. The Act was enacted to prevent the exploitation of inter-state migrant workmen by contractors, and to ensure fair and decent conditions of employment. The law requires all establishments hiring inter-state migrants to be registered, and contractors who recruit such workmen be licensed. Contractors are obligated to provide details of all workmen to the relevant authority. Migrant workmen are entitled to wages similar to other workmen, displacement allowance, journey allowance, and payment of wages during the period of journey. Contractors are also required to ensure regular payment, non-discrimination, provisioning of suitable accommodation, free medical facilities and protective clothing for the workmen.

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In the immediate aftermath of the lockdown, state governments were taken unawares by inter-state migrants who were desperate to return home. Many had lost jobs, would not be able to afford rent and were afraid of falling seriously ill away from their families. The full and proper implementation of this law would have meant that state governments had complete details of inter-state migrant workmen coming through contractors within their states. While this would still leave out migrants who move across states on their own, a large segment would be automatically registered due to the requirements of the Act. States would consequently have been better prepared to take steps to protect such workmen during this lockdown. However, almost no state seems to have implemented this law in letter and spirit.

The primary reason for this seems to be the onerous compliance requirements set out in the law. It not only requires equal pay for inter-state workmen, but also requires other social protection that would make their employment significantly more expensive than intra-state workmen. This includes the payments of different allowances, and requirements that contractors provide accommodation and healthcare for such workmen. Compliance with these requirements is not only onerous, it makes the cost of hiring inter-state workmen higher than hiring similar labour from within the state.

Since the Act is barely implemented, it exists as another law that potentially provides rent-seeking opportunities to enterprising government inspectors while failing in its main objective. Another consequence of weak implementation is the absence of government preparedness and the consequent failure in preventing genuine hardships for vulnerable groups.

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Not only does this raise questions about the utility of such well-meaning but impractical laws, it also highlights the lack of state capacity to enforce such provisions. To implement this law alone, government inspectors would not only have to maintain records of inter-state workmen, but also verify whether all the other requirements regarding wages, allowances, accommodation and health care are complied with.

The issues with the law and its non-enforcement are symptomatic of the socialist era, when the mere enactment of a law with aspirational requirements backed by legal coercion was considered adequate for creating good outcomes. This law, and many other labour-welfare legislation never considered issues like compliance costs, government capacity for enforcement, and importantly, counter-productive consequences. For example, the onerous requirements set out in this law incentivise contractors and employers to under-report inter-state workmen rather than to register them.

The consequences of the lockdown are already proving to be disastrous for migrant labour. One of the lessons from this episode is to not let aspirational requirements become a hindrance to the effective protection of the very groups these requirements are designed for. This will require a principled distinction between formalisation and ostensible social-welfare. While the former seeks to make people or activities visible or legible, the latter goes a step further. Social-welfare protections are predicated upon formalisation, but non-compliance with onerous social welfare requirements can instead inhibit formalisation. This is not merely because of high compliance costs, but also because the state can barely keep up with the task of ensuring compliance with such requirements, made worse given the disincentives to comply.

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This has created a two-tier system formal and informal. Those in the formal tier fewer than 10 percent of the workforce enjoy considerable protections, while those in the informal tier get almost no protections. Since welfare schemes are also predicated on the visibility of those getting the benefits, informal workers, especially in urban areas, fall through cracks in the system. The lack of any welfare net for informal workers in urban areas reflects the consequences of formalisation on paper while farmers get cash transfers, and labourers in rural areas have MGNREGA, there are hardly any schemes for informal workers in urban areas.

Laws such as the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979 must therefore be rationalised to remove requirements that disincentivise formalisation. We must be pragmatic and ensure that employers and contractors have incentives to come forward and register labourers without being worried about punitive action or impractical social safety requirements.

This article appeared in the print edition of May 9, 2020, under the title Let down by law. Krishnan is a retired civil servant. Rai and Burman are with the political economy program in Carnegie India. Views are personal

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Migrant Workmen Act, 1979, must be rationalised to remove requirements that disincentivise formalisation - The Indian Express

Greece on Friday takes over the rotating chair of Europe's oldest human rights organization, the Council of Europe, for a six-month term amid criticism over its treatment of asylum-seekers.

The Greek foreign ministry on Tuesday said the May 15-Nov. 18 presidency would focus on "democracy, the rule of law and the protection of human rights."

Critics of Greece's treatment of asylum-seekers, most of whom live in overcrowded, squalid camps, have included the Council of Europe's own human rights commissioner Dunja Mijatovic. Mijatovic last week said she "shared" concerns raised by rights groups and the U.N. refugee agency regarding a new migration bill that was approved by the Greek parliament on Friday. In addition to shortening the time required to process asylum requests, Mijatovic highlighted an "expanded use of detention" and the creation of closed migrant camps on islands.

There are an estimated 100,000 asylum-seekers in Greece, many of them stranded after other European countries shut their borders in the wake of the 2015 migration crisis.

The Greek government earlier this week dismissed a report in the German weekly Der Spiegel which said there was "overwhelming" evidence that a Pakistani migrant was shot and killed by Greek fire in March. At the time, Athens had also denied reports and testimony from migrants that they had been beaten and stripped by Greek police after crossing the border.

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Greece takes over rotating presidency of Council of Europe amid rights criticism | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 12

Leaders may dismiss the observation but the ruling BJP appears to be on the back foot on at least two accounts the migrants crisis and the overdrive of fake news and selective targeting of Muslims during the lockdown. The latter has not just been highlighted by prominent members of the community in the Arab World but also by the partys ideological fountainhead, the RSS.

It is believed that only after RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat said that an entire community should not be vilified for the mistakes of a few, apparently referring to the Tablighi Jamaat incident, in his address to the cadres on April 26 that regular attacks by BJP spokespersons in television debates against the community toned down.

Also the focus shifted to the big humanitarian crisis unfolding across the country in the form of heart-wrenching visuals of migrants walking on roads and railway tracks to return homes, some also losing their lives in accidents in the process. The RSS has not said anything openly on the issue so far but affiliate BMS has been quite vocal about attempts to change the labour laws by BJP-run Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Observers say the saffron party and the government may try to divert attention by holding individual state governments responsible for their residents, but the decision of the lockdown, much like the controversial demonetisation, will always belong to and will be identified with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The migrant crisis has dented Prime Minister Modis carefully crafted image of someone coming from a humble background, which the BJP successfully used to woo economically weaker sections and win many political battles in the past seven years. Observers add that it also left the society "sharply divided" into two sections the middle/affluent and the economically weaker.

The economically weaker section, especially in the Hindi heartland, has been most committed to the BJP ever since Modi, someone whom they believed to be their own, came to power. No one can predict the future and the next general elections are four years away but currently the stock of his government is down on two accounts, handling of the migrants issue and the systematic targeting of Muslims during the lockdown, says political analyst Sudheer Panwar.

Though several fact-checking platforms and researchers have compiled fake videos against Muslims and attacks prompted by online abuse, apparently a report by a think tank of the Home Ministry headed by Amit Shah has also red-flagged targeting of minorities over the Covid pandemic.

Recently, a study, Temporal Patterns in COVID-19 misinformation in India, at the University of Michigan also pointed towards a rise in the number of debunked misinformation, especially following the third week of March when the discourse dominated by discussions of a possible lockdown and about infections gradually changed to Muslims and religion more significantly.

From our data we found that news sources ranging from less widely consumed, regional digital news to heavily engaged national news have been complicit in spreading misinformation, it said.

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BJP on backfoot on migrants issue and fake news targeting minorities - The Tribune India

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The selected cartoons appeared first in other publications, either in print or online, or on social media, and are credited appropriately.

In todays featured cartoon,Manjul takes a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modis nationwide address after he left a lot of questions unanswered, and instead emphasised on atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India).

Saswata and Surusta Mukherjee, too, take a potshot at the prime ministers speech, in light of the migrant crisis.

After Modi alluded to a possible lockdown 4.0 Tuesday night, Nala Ponappa illustrates the lockdowns in anticipation.

Migrants and the elite have to take different routes to attain Nirvana, comments R. Prasad.

Kirtish Bhatt takes a jibe at the alterations to labour laws in Uttar Pradesh.

The full circle of the Modi regime in the past six years as illustrated by Alok Nirantar.

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Questions left unanswered by Modi and the lockdown waiting room - ThePrint

A viral video of a cat has surfaced on social media and it is "saddened to see India's migrants stranded in the cities and desperate to return to their villages".

With a 'heavy heart', Billooji's open letter on the recent migrant crisis is actually a 2-minute long video.

The video starts with the cat 'meowing' at humans."These are the most uncertain times of life," Billooji says.Talking aboutthe plight faced by these migrant labourers at large, the cat says with the lockdown they have been left without jobs, wages and will soon run out of ration.

The cat also takes a jibe at the government for doing little to help better the condition of the hundreds of the stranded migrants. The feline then says, "The governing and the non-governing hoomans (humans) have also had a catfight about who is going to pay for your journey home."

At the end Billooji says, "I am an atheist so I can't pray for you." However, the feline assures that every migrant is in its "meows, my growls, my yowls, my breath and my spirit." It signs off in its avatar: "Yours Billoji."

The video that has been uploaded on YouTube reads, "A Letter for the Moving Hoomans or 'Migrants'".

Meanwhile, one of the survivors of the Aurangabad train accident on Friday said the group of migrant workers had applied for e-transit passes a week ago but decided to walk towards their home state after not receiving any response from authorities.

Sixteen workers were killed on Friday morning after they stopped for rest on the railway tracks in Aurangabad. They had walked 45 km from Jalna to Aurangabad, and were going towards Bhusawal, another 120 km, on foot in hopes of catching a train.

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WATCH: This Cat Has an Open Letter to Humans on The Migrant Crisis in India - Yahoo India News